


Some That Smile

by TheWhiteLily



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Canon Backstory, Character Study, M/M, POV Jim Moriarty, Warning: young psychopath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 03:48:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9105382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWhiteLily/pseuds/TheWhiteLily
Summary: Everyone gets little teenage crushes. Even thirteen-year-old Jimmy Moriarty.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For the fan_flashworks "Villain" challenge.
> 
>  **Warning** : This is written from the point of view of a psychopath. Jim thinks and plans and does psychopath things, and he likes them. There is nothing graphically described, but there are clear and potentially triggery references to child abuse, bullying, animal torture, and fantasies about murder and the sexual predation of younger child. 
> 
> There’s also implied BeeGees, and after having had them on repeat for three days straight, I can understand how that could be a deal-breaker for anyone. If psycho disco isn’t your cup of tea, please move along, and I shall see you in my next story. :)

> Got the wings of heaven on my shoes  
>  I'm a dancin' man and I just can't lose  
>  You know it's all right, it's okay  
>  I'll live to see another day  
>  _Stayin’ Alive - The BeeGees_

 

Carl Powers was _wonderful_.

The bus left the stop with a whoosh, and as it cleared the corner Jimmy did a little dance on the pavement.  His feet moved to an imaginary beat as he spun in place and walked away, shuffling a quick ball change after every third step, adding in the odd spin or skip when the mood took him. He’d been holding it in all afternoon, on show among the other boring teenagers who put soooo much stock in appearances, as though Jimmy would have let them see _anything_ he didn’t want them to. Every one of them was boring, so boringly invested in their boring friends, their boring boyfriends, boring girlfriends, boring families, and their boring plans for their boring lives, except…

Except Carl.

Because Carl Powers was more than that. Carl was _interesting_.

Jimmy danced his way up onto a stack of planks and bricks piled on the footpath and then down the other side again, ignoring the angry shouts from the building site. Idiots. What did they think he thought they’d do if he didn’t listen?

Carl Powers was smart, utterly wasted at the sports and trade-focussed Patcham Fawcett High. He had confidence, despite the way hitting his growth spurt early had sent him wading through the boys his age like a dark-haired giraffe through the savanna. And Carl Powers was talented, in his own limited way. He competed in the pool not only with his age mates, but with the under fourteens—and he left them all dead in the water.

Jimmy liked talent. He could respect talent, even useless talent. And he could respect the way Carl didn’t pander to the crowd of sycophants surrounding Britain’s rising star of the pool at every meet he’d seen him—the cunning with which he hid the secret that would have made them all turn on him—not well enough that Jimmy couldn’t see it, obviously, but a creditable effort.  Certainly well enough to fool his barely pubescent age-mates.

And then…

Jimmy stopped, revelling momentarily in the feeling of the emotion that had welled up inside once more, the emotion that _Carl_ had brought to the surface. Warm. No, not warm. The cat had made him feel warm. Warm was something different. This was _hot_.

Definitely not bored.

Jimmy had swum slowly at the Sussex regionals; he hadn’t wanted to risk making the cut for the national championship. London was nothing all that interesting. He’d hitched up there before—it wasn’t like Da was going to stop him, or even notice he was missing—and it was _certainly_ nothing interesting while under the care of a school chaperon obsessed with winning sporting glory for the school. Swimming up and down the same pool over and over was boring enough without extra practice, and they were always so tediously clingy if he disappeared for a while.

Usually Jimmy went as fast as he could to get his compulsory co-curricular over with and climbed out of the pool feeling blank and even more bored and wondering why he was still bothering to blend in or breathe the same air as people who thought any of this _mattered._

In the water at the end of the race, Carl had been incandescent with his win against the older boys, glowing as he watched the adjudicators write his time up first on the blackboard—while beside him Jimmy coasted in to touch solidly in third-last place.

“Faggot had a bad day,” laughed the boy in the lane on Carl’s other side as Jimmy surfaced, gesturing to the board where Jimmy’s time was being written up. He was boasting a little too loud for having beaten Jimmy to qualifying by only four tenths of a second.

Idiot.

More than _usually_ an idiot.

As though ‘faggot’ even came _close_ to describing what Jimmy was. Another sports-obsessed moron from Patcham Fawcett. He’d know soon enough who’d passed on _that_ particular piece of gossip and remind them of the value of keeping their opinions to themselves. It wouldn’t take much; at this point everyone at Felpham Comprehensive—students and teachers alike—was leery of trying anything direct with Jimmy.

Oh, whenever things got physical Jimmy had always gone down nicely. He rarely fought back, unless the aggressor required encouragement to dig their own grave, and Jimmy bled prettily enough. Bruised beautifully, and never said a word to the teachers. Well. Almost never. But no matter how hard they tried, no-one had ever managed to knock the smile off his lips, or the fear into his eyes, whether with words or fists or studied indifference.  And then...

And then.  

It was so _easy_ to destroy someone, when you could see right through them.  A casual comment in the right ear, a few planted suspicions, some paranoia, and the idiots would do it themselves.

Dull, really.  But it had to be done.

No one ever got to Jimmy.

And no one ever would.

Carl paused in shaking the water out of his hair at his teammate’s comment, glanced at Jimmy out of the side of his eye—and he’d _laughed._

Oh.

Oh!

How unexpectedly marvellous.

Carl could _see_ him.

Carl wasn't like the rest of the second-rate cronies who wouldn't have recognised holding back if Jimmy had swum _backwards_. Carl was the best swimmer in south England, not some low-rent PE teacher exhorting everyone to do their best with equal disinterest. Of course he could see what they couldn’t—and he hadn't said anything. He’d met Jimmy’s eye and he’d _laughed_. And Jimmy had felt….

Something hot.

Not the low-grade irritation of dealing with idiots day in, day out; not the superior resignation seeing them flapping about, failing to see the simplest solutions to their problems; not the full-on _fury_ at at being disappointed by someone he’d imagined to be more than they turned out to be, but….

Hot.

Even Da’s fits of temper didn’t make him feel like that anymore. They didn’t make him feel anything anymore, pathetic cringing drunkard that Da was at this point. As though there was an insult he hadn’t yet thrown, a cuff across the head heavy enough to make Jimmy go all limp and helplessly _alive_. As though Jimmy couldn’t mouth along with him every passive aggressive remark about the bitch who’d whelped him—as though it was Jimmy’s fault that dying was something people _did_.

As though Jimmy could be anything other than _exactly_ where he’d chosen to be given an unfortunate clumsy step could have taken Da any night of the week. He could have aspirated on his own vomit, fallen asleep and slipped under the water in the bath, succumbed to blood alcohol toxicity, crashed his car on the way to pick up another carton, inhaled too much smoke while he was passed out and the house burned down around him….

Da was a dead man drinking, and it was all too easy to be bothered with until Jimmy was old enough to skip over foster care. There was no need to make the tedious things more difficult than he had to, and he did have _some_ self control, after all. He hadn’t even done anything to Carl, while he'd been in the pool swimming his second race, this time against his age-mates. Well, nothing more than pick the combination for the younger boy’s locker so he could steal his shoelaces. But he’d done that at the last three meets, too, just on principle.  No one should love a pair of shoes that much.

Especially not Carl.

Carl was _different_.

Jimmy jumped up onto the low brick wall edging a tired-looking garden without losing his rhythm, spinning and hopping gleefully over the crenellations until he came to the end and jumped down and on again, narrowly avoiding the detritus of a clogged-up drain.

Carl had tried to apologise, later, for letting his classmate’s slur pass unquestioned. Gorgeous boy. Out of the water he looked less confident: less a sleek part-fish, more a gawky and awkward adolescent. His narrow, quickly-growing bones seemed stretched out too thin between bulky joints and the nervous, oversized hands he used like paddles in the water. Embarrassment made him duck his head, staring down past the whipcord muscles of his legs at the big feet his height was finally catching up to. He was going to grow at least another two inches before the end of the swimming season, judging by the size of those revolting shoes.

Jimmy had lowered his eyelashes as he accepted the apology, the heat in his chest curling his mouth into a knowing smile. Carl had realised he’d crossed a line. He just hadn’t understood _which one_.

Clever Carl. Clever, clever, oh so _stupid_ Carl. He was _wonderful_ , he really was.

The cat had been wonderful too; a stray ginger that had wandered into Jimmy’s backyard a month or two back. He’d spent weeks coaxing it close with indirect eye-contact and indifferent body language, an abandoned saucer of milk and a casually twitching bit of string, until it had come close enough for him to gently stroke its fur and feel the quivering heartbeat hammering beneath prominent ribs, until it had nuzzled into his hands greedy for more more more, until the dumb thing had put its head _right through_ the loop in the string he’d been playing with and practically begged him to draw the noose tight around its throat.

It had felt so _warm_ in his hands, and it had made Jimmy feel warm too.

He’d never liked cats.

Carl Powers could be like that, too: warm and alive and then—later, so many interesting hours later— _not_.

The cat had gone out in the week before last’s rubbish, nestled under a layer of Da’s empty bottles after Jimmy had got bored. The bloody scratches on his wrists had nearly healed, too, even though he'd picked them open again. The cat wasn't interesting. But Carl… _Carl_ ….

Jimmy could still feel the heat of Carl laughing— _laughing!_ —at him. Looking at him like he could _see_ him. Making Jimmy feel…

No one ever got to Jimmy, and that meant one thing for Carl.

He couldn’t be allowed to continue.

How _wonderful_.

Jimmy walked on, the bounce in his stride diminished, his gait turned slow and economical as he let the options play out in his head.

He’d need to be careful as he coaxed Carl in; he was cleverer than a cat, cleverer than Da, cleverer than a teacher. Maybe, in a couple of years he could even have been clever enough to provide a genuine challenge.

Perhaps it would be more fun to wait, but Jimmy had never been _that_ patient. He’d only get bored if he tried to make it last, and that would be a terrible waste.

Oh well!

Carl _was_ clever enough to be fun, while there was a game to play.  He was special enough to be interesting—but Jimmy tried not to fool himself that he wasn’t still ordinary. Of course Carl would still be ordinary, because Jimmy was going to have to cast a wider net than _Sussex_  if he was ever going to find someone worthwhile to play with.

The plan was already unfolding in his head. It wouldn't be hard to nip up to London during the nationals. Carl wouldn’t question that Jimmy was there as a spectator, wouldn’t imagine that anyone’s life didn’t revolve around the swimming pool, even after he’d seen Jimmy deliberately miss qualifying. He could get close, get Carl alone so he could feel the thump-thump of his frightened heart, the stickiness of his blood…

No, that part had just been tedious. Meat, blood, organs, nerve responses, nothing more than basic biology. He could have got _that_ much out of Da with a kitchen knife anytime he felt like becoming an orphan.

There was no need to get his hands dirty, not when it would be so much more satisfying to arrange for Carl kill himself—and so very easy to contaminate the cream Carl used obsessively before and after every swim to protect that _gorgeous_ skin from the chlorine. Brighton General dumped its medical waste rather sloppily at the back—there’d be something he could use if he looked. He could make the switch while Carl was in the pool, or… no. Even better. Before. Timing was everything.

He would switch it _back_ again while Carl was in the pool. This way, he wouldn’t even need to find a lethal poison—and even if anyone suspected, the pool would wash away all the evidence.

 _All_ the evidence.  Of _anything_. Which meant…

The delicate web of the plan sparkled in Jimmy’s mind, hoarfrost scattered along each invisible string.

Oh, he could do that _too!_

Because Jimmy knew Carl’s secret, the one he worked so awkwardly to hide. The athletic prodigy, rocketed into puberty ahead of his classmates, stripping off four times a day in a busy locker room among a crush of paranoid adolescent boys in lycra, _obviously_ he couldn’t be _gay_. Even if he was. Even if his eyes were already lingering in all the right places. Even if Jimmy had seen them lingering on _him_.

Jimmy shivered with delight.

If he played it right, it’d be easy enough to get close. Easy enough to make Carl think it was his own idea to get closer still. Close enough to _feel_ Carl’s big body against him, warm and alive, maybe even inside Jimmy, stretching him, hurting him, leaving desperate scratches on his skin without knowing that the poison was ready and waiting for him, without knowing that soon, after Carl had kissed him for luck and put on his skin cream and lined up at the blocks, without knowing that soon, soon… _he_ would be the one struggling and dying, drowning in his own element.

Oh, that would be just _perfect_.

It _must_ happen, it simply _must_.

Jimmy twirled and let the inaudible music take his feet again.

It would be a month before he could see Carl again at the nationals. A month to prepare to hitch his way to London and become to everyone but _him_ just another anonymous boy in the change rooms, clustering around gorgeous, wonderful, special, soon-to-be-late Carl.

And who knew? If it worked out, Jimmy might even decide he liked swimming after all.

**Author's Note:**

> It's possible this story is part of a series on Jim Moriarty's youth and young adulthood. I had been delaying posting this one until I had the rest written--but then I realised how fast Season 4 was sneaking up on me, and decided to get it up before it's officially outdated. Let me know if you're interested in seeing more. :)
> 
> If you enjoyed this peek into Jim's head, may I humbly recommend my story [Living Conditions](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4909624), which delves deep into his character post-Reichenbach. It's not in the same verse, but was characterised by the same research. It's is a difficult read, going far deeper into psychopath land than this one, so it's definitely not for everyone--but though I do say so myself, the plot is spectacular. Check the warnings and heed them: they are there for your protection.


End file.
